Strong bonds form stronger materials. For this reason, the investigation on thermal degradation of materials is a significantly important area in research and development activities. The analysis of thermal stability can be used to assess the behavior of materials in the aggressive environmental conditions, which in turn provides valuable information about the service life span of the materiel. Unlike other books published so far that have focused on either the fundamentals of thermal analysis or the degradation pattern of the materials, this book is specifically on the mechanism of degradation of materials. The mechanism of rapturing of chemical bonds as a result of exposure to high-temperature environment is difficult to study and resulting mechanistic pathway hard to establish. Limited information is available on this subject in the published literatures and difficult to excavate. Chapters in this book are contributed by the experts working on thermal degradation and analysis of the wide variety of advanced and traditional materials. Each chapter discusses the material, its possible application, behavior of chemical entities when exposed to high-temperature environment and mode and the mechanistic route of its decomposition. Such information is crucial while selecting the chemical ingredients during the synthesis or development of new materials technology.

Experimental Robotics XV is the collection of papers presented at the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan on October 3-6, 2016. 73 scientific papers were selected and presented after peer review. The papers span a broad range of sub-fields in robotics including aerial robots, mobile robots, actuation, grasping, manipulation, planning and control and human-robot interaction, but shared cutting-edge approaches and paradigms to experimental robotics. The readers will find a breadth of new directions of experimental robotics. The International Symposium on Experimental Robotics is a series of bi-annual symposia sponsored by the International Foundation of Robotics Research, whose goal is to provide a forum dedicated to experimental robotics research. Robotics has been widening its scientific scope, deepening its methodologies and expanding its applications. However, the significance of experiments remains and will remain at the center of the discipline. The ISER gatherings are a venue where scientists can gather and talk about robotics based on this central tenet.

ISRR, the International Symposium on Robotics Research, is one of robotics pioneering Symposia, which has established over the past two decades some of the fields most fundamental and lasting contributions. This book presents the results of the seventeenth edition of Robotics Research ISRR15, offering a collection of a broad range of topics in robotics. The content of the contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research.: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and new emerging areas of applications. The diversity, novelty, and span of the work unfolding in these areas reveal the fields increased maturity and expanded scope and define the state of the art of robotics and its future direction.

ISRR, the International Symposium on Robotics Research, is one of robotics pioneering Symposia, which has established over the past two decades some of the fields most fundamental and lasting contributions. This book presents the results of the seventeenth edition of Robotics Research ISRR15, offering a collection of a broad range of topics in robotics. The content of the contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research.: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and new emerging areas of applications. The diversity, novelty, and span of the work unfolding in these areas reveal the fields increased maturity and expanded scope and define the state of the art of robotics and its future direction.

This brochure offers numerical models of wind-induced aeolian vibrations and sub-span oscillations of the conductors. It highlights what can be expected from numerical models regarding conductor vibrations. Assessment of the aeolian vibration condition of particular lines, with conductors whose mechanical properties are poorly defined, or with special terrain conditions, may require field measurements; Analytical methods based on the EBP and shaker-based technology can provide a useful tool to design damping systems for the protection of single conductors against aeolian vibrations This work reports the state of the art for professionals regarding aeolian vibrations and subspan oscillations modelling.

The increasing demand for low cost, low-to-medium volume production of modular goods with many different variations creates the need for production systems that are flexible and that allow for small product delivery times. This leads to production systems working on small batches, having low setup times and mainly characterized by many degrees of freedom in the decision making process. This type of system is known as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). An ANFIS technique has been used for this purpose. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is one of the Neuro- Fuzzy systems in which a fuzzy system is implemented in the framework of adaptive networks. ANFIS constructs an input-output mapping based both on human knowledge (in the form of fuzzy rules) and on generated input-output data pairs after certain trainings to the similar situations arising from different conditions within the system. The objective of our work is to evaluating the performances of system in terms of Make Span Time at different levels of Routing and Machine flexibilities andfor different scheduling and dispatching rules.

This book combines the contributions of experts in the field to describe the behavior of various materials, micromechanisms involved during processing, and the optimization of cold-spray technology. It spans production, characterization, and applications including wear resistance, fatigue, life improvement, thermal barriers, crack repair, and biological applications. Cold spray is an innovative coating technology based on the kinetic energy gained by particles sprayed at very high pressures. While the technique was developed in the 1990s, industrial and scientific interest in this technology has grown vastly in the last ten years. Recently, many interesting applications have been associated with cold-sprayed coatings, including wear resistance, fatigue life improvement, thermal barriers, biological applications, and crack repair. However, many fundamental aspects require clarification and description. Prof. Pasquale Cavaliere, from the Department of Innovation Engineering of the University of Salento, received his PhD in 1999-2002 in Materials Engineering, at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He was the Marie Curie Fellow at Materials Science and Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA. He is the author of over 250 papers in International Journals and Conferences, with an h-Index of 27 and over 2000 citations. With Springer International Publishing he Edited in 2016 the Book: Ironmaking and Steelmaking Processes, ISBN 978-3-319-39527-2.